


Nous ne Sommes Jamais Promis Demain.

by pickwicklingpapers



Series: Cophine AUs [6]
Category: Orphan Black (TV), Pushing Daisies
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pushing Daisies Fusion, Delphine Cormier-centric, F/F, Suicide Attempt, cophine - Freeform, just incase, this was going to be very different, weirdly little dialogue??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 12:34:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6079527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickwicklingpapers/pseuds/pickwicklingpapers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"i can save your life with a touch of my finger" au</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nous ne Sommes Jamais Promis Demain.

**Author's Note:**

> so basically i am a terrible terrible person who took way too long to write this and i haven't even finished BeggarWhoRides' america's new hope i'm such an awful person pls everyone forgive me
> 
> whilst this is a pushing daisies au, there's no actual knowledge of pushing daisies needed for this because whilst i did try to be brian fuller, i'm just not as wonderful
> 
> definitely more delphine than anyone else whoops on the other hand it is 12.30 and i need to sleep so

It was a saying that her mother would always tell them, knitting by the fire, or brewing coffee in the kitchen. Whenever Delphine or her brother asked what was happening the next day, or what was for dinner the next night, their mother would smile, pat them on the cheek and say it. Nous ne sommes jamais promis demain. _We are never promised tomorrow_. 

She meant it in the manner that those with no worry mean it. She meant that it was pointless fretting about what would come next because there was no guarantee that anything would come, and so _carpe diem_. 

Her young daughter took it to mean that everything ends. 

Delphine Cormier was ten years, forty-seven weeks and twenty-three hours old when she learnt the truth behind her mother’s words. Drawing at the kitchen table one day after school, she watched as her mother bent down to take a pie out of the oven and never stood back up.  

A flash of blood in the retina as a capillary in the brain burst,  flooding the grey matter with a thick, oozing liquid, as red as the cherry syrup leaking between the tiles. Slowly, Delphine started from her seat, unsure what had happened. Reaching tentatively forward, a spark leapt from her finger to her mother's skin and Maman rose, brushing hair from her face retrieving the pie. The clock ticked sixty times. 

Next door, Delphine Cormier's brother died. 

 

\----

 

Throughout the screaming and the ambulance and the hospital and the police, Delphine kept quiet about her new gift. Repeats were necessary to draw valid and accurate conclusions. It was impossible for a single touch to reanimate a living, breathing organism. It was impossible and so Delphine just let the grief wash over her.  

Delphine kept quiet when, later that night, her mother tucked her up in bed, smoothed back her hair and smiled. Eyes watering, she leaned down and kissed her last remaining child on the forehead. It would be the last thing she’d ever do. 

Delphine kept quiet when her father packed her up for boarding school. She kept quiet as her last family shut her in a car and walked away without saying a word. She kept quiet as she experimented and concluded that she was, in fact, responsible for a double homicide.

Delphine's research, conducted with leaves and fruit and a dead bird in the garden showed three clear and certain rules. First touch: life. Second touch: death. Anything alive for more than a minute would take the life of an organism of roughly equal standing - a bird for a mouse, a flower for a fruit, a mother for a brother. To this end, Delphine resolved to keep quiet about her skills, her guilt over the death of her mother and brother mingling with a lasting fear of small white rooms, and men cutting until there is nothing left to cut. 

 

\----

 

The boarding school was quiet, cold, and unfriendly, much like its pupils. Like the most delicate of flowers, Delphine slowly withered away in the cruel environment, skin like paper under the harsh fluorescent lights. Looking on the outside as she felt on the inside, Delphine achieved her goals and waited out her time. Science was her escape, the biology of immunity and cause and effect as intriguing as it was vital to her condition. She quietly excelled, almost topping her classes but not quite – attention would be fatal. 

Six years, three weeks and fifteen days after the double demise of Delphine Cormier’s brother and mother, she entered the prefect bathroom and drew a bath. Ducking under the water, she shook her hair out and took a deep breath. Picking up a scalpel from the biology lab, Delphine sighed. She’ll be glad when it all finishes. When the world ends, she’ll breathe a sigh of relief. Blood pooled into the water, red diluting as the molecules mixed. For the first time in years, Delphine allowed herself to remember the taste of her mother’s cherry pie.

The room darkened and she slipped beneath the water. As the banging on the door synced with the drums in her head, she wondered if her curse worked on herself.

 

\----

 

It didn’t. 

Much in the same way as her dead cells, once detached from her skin, didn’t trigger the same reactions as her living cells, she couldn’t effect herself. However, survival is also impacted by outside factors, and the impatience of the next girl in line for the bathroom allowed Delphine’s timeline to continue.

There was no therapy, no psychiatric help. Delphine’s father had picked, whether by accident or out of spite, the only boarding school in France with an infirmary smaller than the kitchen. With no support system in place for the girls and scars on her wrists, Delphine ended up in one of two beds. The matron was the only person in the school with any kind of medical training and even that was the minimal legal necessity from the local college. The outlook was bleak. Delphine knew what her mistake had been, and had it not been for the other bed, she would have bided her time and tried again. As it was, the other bed was filled by a girl in her year.

Delphine Cormier had never really paid much attention to Danielle Fournier, and vice versa. Both were quiet, unassuming, and extraordinary. Both were outsiders. Both spent the holidays in the boarding house, unwanted. Danielle had spent many of the holidays in the infirmary, and Delphine wasn’t much of a talker anyway.

Friendship blossomed in that cold, dank room. Like flowers that push themselves through cracks in cement, like trees that split boulders in order to live, the two girls grew together. One coughed in the night, the other sat and thought of a bright room and clock on the counter ticking down. One dreamt of a missing home whilst the other dreamt of pie. Delphine would visit Danielle every evening when the other girl was in her bed. Danielle didn’t know what was wrong with her – apparently the doctors hadn’t found much of anything – but she had tests every other month or so for her rare genetic heart defect. Delphine kept her company throughout it all, promising to find some sort of treatment once she was a doctor.

That was how Delphine was Noticed. 

For all sixteen years, forty two weeks and 17 hours of her life, Danielle Fournier had been unaware of one major thing. There was no rare genetic heart defect. There were no specialists. Once her parents had died, a man posing as her uncle had taken custody and placed her in a school that cared so little about its students that it would not notice one of its pupils being continuously subjected to rigorous testing. A monitor, placed at the school to record all movements and interactions, sent weekly reports to an unknown recipient. Danielle Fournier was copyrighted genetic material, and utmost care had to be taken to achieve the conditions wanted. A friend this late in childhood was an unwanted variable, and had to be dealt with. Whilst observing Delphine Cormier, the monitor observed two surprising things. One; Danielle Fournier had complete and utter trust in Delphine Cormier. Two; Delphine Cormier could reanimate the dead.

The girl was removed from class under the pretence of a family emergency, and taken to a DYAD facility. As she was walked down a bland, clinical corridor under the supervision of no less than five adults, Delphine caught movements out of the corner of her eye – women sitting on examination beds, crying in rooms with large glass observation windows. A brightly lit white room, fully prepped for surgery. At exactly seventeen years and three days old, Delphine Cormier made the biggest decision of her life. When the DYAD official offered her a seat, she took it. She sat up straight, with all the poise and grace expected of a young woman and listened to the proposition offered as a choice. Delphine wasn’t stupid – she was a clever girl and could read between the lines. This wasn’t an offer, as such, but a choice. A choice between betraying her only friend’s trust, and spending the rest of her life as a test subject.

Remembering the white room that she had glimpsed and the old nightmare, Delphine nodded. She wasn’t promised a tomorrow, but she would work hard to make sure that she had one.

 

\----

 

Delphine Cormier returned to school with a new meaning and a purpose. DYAD would further her career, fund an American university education and, most importantly, refrain from experimenting on her. All she had to do was provide weekly updates on every aspect of her friend’s life. She did so efficiently, and quickly learnt the meaning of clinical detachment.

She moved to the United States of America, attending college with DYAD’s funding. Her degree in immunology opened up work with Dr. Aldous Leekie, allowing her to broaden her horizons whilst studying the things she loved. Eugenicist is a dirty word, but Delphine wasn’t exactly pure. She didn’t look back, and she never thought of Danielle again. Coldness is the way to survive in such a world.

Ten years, twelve weeks and six days after leaving France, word came down. Delphine Cormier’s role was to be reinstated. She would attend university, pose as a student, and monitor another clone. The plan was set and carried out well – an emotional break up and forgotten notes were easy to fake. The results were not. Slowly, and then all at once, Delphine Cormier fell in love with Cosima Niehaus, the false bottom of their relationship threatening to drop her at every turn. Delphine Cormier had kept secrets for over two decades. A kiss on the cheek could not change that.

Slowly, Cosima began to find out. The American broke through Delphine’s defences and accused her of every lie, and every tall tale. Every report to DYAD, every nugget of information slipped between sheets of paper was opened and laid bare. Delphine sat and took it all – every violent rant, every loud exclamation, every glare from every clone. 

Are they really accusations if everything is true?

Throughout it all, Delphine kept her own secrets close to her chest. She’d been playing the game long enough to know that the only currency worth dealing is secrets and lies. As much as she loved Cosima, as much as she would do anything to protect the American, somethings are too precious too loose, to dear to play until the last remaining card is gone. Despite the lies, the back alley deals, the espionage, despite the threat of losing Cosima, there was nothing Delphine Cormier feared more than that cold white room. She would fight for Cosima and her sisters, she would battle against Topside and DYAD as much as she could, but she would not risk being taken away. She would not become one of the experiments. She had wanted to die once before, but now she wanted a tomorrow with a wife, and she refused to give the promise of it up. Cosima was copyrighted genetic material and whilst Delphine felt for her, she would not tumble down that rabbit hole. She pushed as far as she could in secret, telling Cosima none of it.

The plane to Frankfurt was as cold and lonely as her new office. Her new position was nothing more than elaborate blackmail. _Be good and play along, or it’s the laboratory for you_. Delphine had been given an extensive tour of the ‘research facilities’ whilst in Europe and the threat had been not so subtle. As she forced her words out in Felix’s hall, she wished, not for the first time, that her mother had never died, that she had not been born with this power at her fingertips. She wished to be able to take Cosima away. Instead, she was trapped, stuck between keeping Cosima safe and loving all the sisters who hated her, and the pressure and threats from DYAD.

But Delphine Cormier was no longer a ten year old child, wilting away in Lille. Delphine Cormier had grown in the harsh environment, and was willing to push that little bit more. She was a strong woman, with a backbone of steel, honed by years of constant fear. She didn’t bow easily, not to Sarah Manning, not to Cosima’s hatred and blame, not to DYAD and their threats. She was stuck with Topside, but they still needed her. A new Delphine had risen from the ashes of the old. A Delphine prepared to do anything, even use her curse, to save Cosima. A Delphine who refused to be a test subject, and so had learnt how to play both sides of the fence. Her grass was never green, but she was alive.

It was this Delphine that faced down Shay. It was this Delphine that was wrong. It was this Delphine that broke into a Topside office and destroyed the files on Cormier, D. It was this Delphine that pushed too far on both sides. It was this Delphine who took every risk she could to protect a woman who wanted nothing to do with her. If she was honest with herself, it was this Delphine that no longer cared. She still dreamed of experiments and men in a white room and cutting, but she wasn’t afraid to die. If anything, she was afraid to live.

Delphine Cormier said her goodbyes. She had outlived her usefulness and, if she was right, those in charge of DYAD didn’t remember the terms of her blackmail. The files were gone, and she didn’t think that there were any copies. She hoped she wasn't wrong. She would be eliminated, and she would go with grace. Her fingertips would lose their power, like a distant sun spluttering and going out – of no consequence to anyone but herself. She placed her bag on the ground and turned. The gun rose. She wouldn’t survive this – they meant to kill her, not study her – and with one nightmare no longer an issue, Delphine only cared for one thing.

“What will happen to her?”

Blood flowed, colonising the silk like bacteria on agar. Her back hit the car and her knees buckled. Delphine Cormier gasped and knelt on the ground, dreams pouring out in her tears. In the distance, she could hear Maman -

We are never promised tomorrow.

\----

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The room was cold, sterile, and a gleaming white. Delphine Cormier awoke.

**Author's Note:**

> at least i didn't kill her this time???


End file.
